Authors: Pearl S. Buck
She seized him by the arm and shook him. “You’ll stand what we all have to stand!” she shouted furiously. “I’m so tired I can’t sit down without falling asleep. But I must go on, and so must you—”
He rushed past her, out of the house and slammed the door. He was away somewhere all the time now. She strode still furious to her mother’s room. She was not anxious about him. He would fling himself off somewhere for the day, but at night he would be back.
She was so tired she was cross with Rose, willing earnest Rose, whose soft white pretty hands were so strangely clumsy, who dropped a hypodermic needle she was given to hold and grieved so much that she could not be scolded. But sometimes Joan was so tired she did scold. “Rose, how can you be so stupid!” But there was no satisfaction in it. The shallow gentle hazel eyes widened a little, and Rose said nothing. But soon she slipped away to her own room to pray. Joan knew. Once, contrite, she had followed Rose and opened the door. Rose was on her knees by the bed, her face in the curve of her arm, her eyes closed, her lips moving a little. Joan closed the door abruptly. Rose did not need her contrition. Rose had her comfort. Soon she came back, her eyes placid, her lips curved in tranquillity. “Shall I fill the hot-water bottle now, Joan?” Joan, wanting to cry out at her, “Why do you ask me—why don’t you feel it and find out?” said gently, “Yes, please, Rose.”
“She means well,” the trained nurse said, pug-nosed and cheerful, “but lots of people who mean well are all thumbs and fingers when it comes to doing something.” She seized the bottle when Rose came in. “I’ll put it in,” she said. “You’ll burn her feet—she can’t feel them now.”
In the end it was this stubby pug-nosed woman upon whom Joan leaned. The nurse clapped her shoulder heartily. “I’ll be having you as my patient next, if you don’t let down! Cheer up! When you know what’s got to come, take it!”
This cheerful stranger was good for them all. She skillfully warded the father away. “Here, Reverend,” she cried with much good nature, “you’re not wanted here. You go back to your preaching where you’ll be out of the way. Patient’s sleeping. I’ll tell you if you’re wanted.” She advised Joan in a hissing whisper while the dying woman slept, immaculate for death, “I’d let that young Frank have a rip if I were you when all this is over. Let him go away somewhere. He’s hit hard by this, or something. I can’t make him out. Rose is different. Nothing’s going to hit her hard, nor your pa. They’re all wrapped up in themselves somehow. I don’t understand it, but I’ve seen it before. Religion’s a selfish thing—they don’t feel if they’ve got religion. You let the boy have a fling and don’t worry about those two, but think of yourself for a bit. Got a feller or something to give you a little fun? This is an awful hole of a town. Can’t you get away to some real place where there’s something going on?”
Go away? She had forgotten there were places to which people could go. She shook her head. “I don’t know—I’ll have to take care of my father and the others.”
The nurse rocked back and forth, considering. She was health in this place of sickness. She made the fetid air wholesome and hearty as though a wind blew cleanly through the room and Joan welcomed her. It was good to have this forthrightness, this simple decision, this humorous comprehension. Her mother stirred and moaned in her deep sleep. The pain was coming again. The nurse jumped to her feet and in a second had thrust the needle deep into the swollen arm. “There, ducky,” she said cheerfully. “You always know the very minute, don’t you—”
Watching the compact thick figure move amiable and competent about the bed, Joan was made conscious of life beyond this room. From death to death this woman moved, always lively, always carrying with her the atmosphere of casual, bustling, outside life. By her very comfortable casualness she put death into its place and made it part of life. Despair melted before her cheerful commonplaceness. Beyond, beyond this sorrowful room, beyond this hour, there was a strong everyday life, which, forgetting death, proceeded heartily to work and pleasure. She must be brave for death, looking beyond.
But at the end she was not brave. She and Francis were not brave. Rose was brave, and the father was brave. They were all downstairs waiting. All day the nurse had said, “Any moment now.” She said, “Don’t come in—I can tend to things.” She ceased her joking for the day and put off for the day her ready smile. She was quiet and cool and without feeling and they all turned to her. Dr. Crabbe came and went, jamming his hat upon his head with fury and nodding at them speechlessly. “Can’t do a thing,” he muttered at last. “Fixed it so she won’t know. Nurse’ll do everything—tell you—”
So they waited, listening. But they could not wait together. When they were together the waiting grew intolerable. They must part to bear it, each knowing the other near, but not near enough to see a face. The father shut himself behind his study door and sat alone, listening, his head drooping, his hands folded upon his knees. Francis sat curled into the great old red leather chair in the sitting room, a book in his hands. He had pulled the chair to face the window and the high back hid him except for the crown of his black head and he sat listening. Rose sat quietly at their mother’s desk, writing in a little diary she kept, writing steadily in her small clear compact script, pausing to think and write again, pausing to listen.
But Joan went out into the garden. It was two days before Christmas. The air was warm and still but the garden was dying, was dead. She walked about in the sunshine, listening, waiting, her footsteps rustling in the fallen leaves. They had forgotten to clear the leaves away. In other years it was always her mother who said, “This week we must rake the leaves.” But this year they were not raked.
The garden was full of her mother. Here were the lemon lilies she had planted, years ago a solitary bulb, now a great undying clump. Next spring they would burst heartily into life and blossoming. Strange and sad that people alone could live but once, that human bodies alone must die and turn to dust, with only a single spring. There was a secret in those strong dark rooted bulbs living on and on to blossom every year. A belated bird called through the quiet air, and listening, Joan heard the faint monotonous cheeping of the last autumn cricket, awaking drowsily in the warmth of the winter sun.
Then the voice for which they had all been listening fell. The nurse called strongly to them all. “Now—she’s ready to go—” Joan’s feet ran to carry her to her mother. They ran with the habit of all those months. But her heart was frightened and crying out, “No—no—no, I don’t want to see—” Running past the dining room door she heard Rose calling to Francis, “Aren’t you coming, Francis?” She heard Francis crying back, his voice cracked and crying, “I can’t—Gee, I can’t—” He began to sob.
But she ran on. At the door she met her father and Rose. They passed her and went in together. She would follow them. Of course she would follow them. She leaped against the door frame, panting. In a moment she would follow them. Just now for this moment something blinded her—not tears. She was not weeping. Her throat was thick, her eyes fogged, her heart beating all over her body. She was afraid. She turned blindly to the window and stood looking out across to the church. Steady herself—she must steady herself, and then she would go in … They were coming now to decorate the church for Christmas, all the people. There they all were, laden with evergreens to make wreaths. The organ began to play. She could hear it rolling forth, deep faint enormous chords rolling out of the pipes. “Joy to the world!” the organ shouted. Joy—strange foreign word, meaningless word, false and lying word!
Rose’s voice broke across the moment. “She’s gone—Oh, Joan, why didn’t you come in?” She turned and looked at Rose. There were tears in Rose’s eyes and reproach in her voice. But Joan did not weep, not now. Relief swept through her. Now she need not go in because the moment was passed and it could never come again—never, never. Rose asked again, “Why didn’t you come in?” She wiped her eyes delicately and went on, “She never waked at all—just slept until the last second, smiled, and sighed. That was all. You should have seen her smile, Joan.”
But Joan cried out passionately, “I’m glad I didn’t!” She rushed to her own room and flung herself upon her bed and cried over and over into her pillow, “I don’t want to see her dead—I don’t want to see her dead!”
Yet they would not let her have her way. No, soon they took possession of the house where her mother had lived so long. The women came out of the village, crowding into the house, friendly, kindly, eager, curious, and the house must give up all its secrets to them. Mrs. Winters, dressed in an old noisy black taffeta, pushed them firmly away. She herded them together and cried at them, “Now you all go away. We are going to do everything necessary. Mr. Blum is here waiting. The Ladies’ Aid is going to see to the flowers and everything.”
Behind her Mr. Blum stood, short and fat and dark, trying not to be facetious. “Sure, we’ll do it all, folks,” he said loudly. “That’s our business, you know. I always say it may be a dead business, but—” He stopped and coughed, remembering he was in the presence of the bereaved. “Sure—” he ended weakly.
So they were together again in the sitting room. They had nowhere else to go except in this one room that had been kept for them. The house was not theirs. Even in the study there were women’s coats and hats piled on the table. Hannah was crying and hurrying in the kitchen to make coffee for everybody. Past the open door went wreaths and flower pieces. There was the sudden shadow of a great black box. “Easy there, boys,” Mr. Blum’s voice roared, “careful of the corners!” Francis, standing by the window, turned away from them, biting his nails, and leaped and banged the door behind him and ran though the kitchen into the backyard and down the south street.
Rose sat by the desk. The little diary was open before her. She began to write in it again, weeping silently, writing down the story of her mother’s death. She blotted it carefully and turned to Joan. “I wish you could have seen the smile at the end—” In the leather chair the father sat in his plum-colored sateen quilted robe. The sunshine of midafternoon shone searing across his face, withering it, making him white and old …
Joan sat on a stool before the wood fire Hannah had lit and stared into it. She spread out her hands to the blaze, for she was cold. Upstairs they were tending the body she had tended all these days. But all the tending had not been enough. She was tired to the heart and it was not enough. Death had not stayed for all her fighting. They were washing the flesh. Strangers were there at the end.
Her father’s melancholy voice broke across her agony, reflective, mournfully, surprised, “I think I am the first one of all my family to have been left a widower, Joan.”
“Yes, Father?” she answered. A little clear blue flame darted out of a log and flashed slender and upright as a dagger toward the chimney.
“Yes,” he continued in a sort of sad surprise. “John was younger than his wife Annie and he died before her, and Isaac never had his health after the war and he died of old wounds and David died of typhoid, and Frederick is still living—”
“Dearies,” said Mrs. Winters at the door, “come and see her! She’s so sweet—I never saw her look sweeter—” Somehow she herded them all together. “Where’s Francis? Oh, he’ll be too late. We do want to get all this sadness over before Christmas—I do think he might have stayed with the family this last hour—I wish he had listened to—”
She was pushing them upstairs. Rose and Joan and their father. The father tripped and Mrs. Winters caught his elbow and held it firmly, guiding him. “Now, Doctor, I don’t wonder you feel it, but the Lord giveth and taketh. Joan, we put on the orchid bed-jacket and a fresh—It was difficult to dress—you know—Well, she looks so sweet, her lovely hair all white and still so curly, and Mr. Blum just touched her up a little.”
“I can’t,” gasped Joan.
“Oh, honey, she’s so sweet to look at—your own mother—You’ll always regret it—” She was pushed into the room. Now it was a strange room, full of strangers. Mr. Blum was there, wiping his hands on a stiff linen towel. “One thing,” he whispered hoarsely. “I always ask the family, should we take off the wedding ring?”
Against her will Joan’s eyes searched in terror. She saw a tall stiff doll lying in the great box, dressed and tinted into the semblance of life. The strong shapely hands were folded upon the breast, the wedding ring was shining there. For days they could not have taken away the ring if they would. But now the hideous swelling was mysteriously gone. Her mother was her own self once more, but strangely her own self dead, dead, with her hands folded upon her breast as only the hands of the dead are folded.
“Let her alone!” Joan cried, her voice bursting from her, and to her own horror she burst into loud childish weeping before all these strangers.
So she lost the body of her mother. They took her from the hour of her death and she was no more for her children. Others had her. Even at the funeral she belonged to others. Only for a moment did Joan regain her. There was the moment when she spoke for her mother to them all and so for that moment regained her. The church, they said, perturbed, was decorated for Christmas. Holly and pine wreaths and a silver star were for Christmas. They all had loved her, of course they wanted everything right for their beloved pastor’s wife, but the wreaths were so hard to put up and take down.
“Leave them as they are!” she cried at them. There they were, the women of the Ladies’ Aid, crowded into the sitting room, heavy-bodied, anxious, kind. “We don’t want to seem lacking in respect,” they said, their faces solemn. But Joan flung out her arms and cried at them, “Don’t you remember how she loved Christmas? Why, on Christmas morning she used to run over to the church before breakfast to see it! She thought the church never so beautiful as on Christmas morning. Even when she’d spent days on the wreaths and even after she had hung the star herself and had seen it all the night before, she’d run over alone on Christmas morning. She wouldn’t want the wreaths taken down because of her, and not the star, especially.”